Ishmael—Friday Feature

Ishmael, the allegorical novel by Daniel Quinn, examines mythology, its effect on ethics, and how that relates to sustainability. This story’s premise and its relationship to sustainability intrigued me so much, it appears in today’s Friday Feature. I found the discussions on evolution and ecology fascinating, particularly as they related to human ethics.

The novel starts with a newspaper ad: "Teacher seeks pupil, must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person." When a man responds to the ad, he finds himself in a room with a telepathic gorilla, Ishmael. The story continues as a socratic dialogue between Ishmael and his student as they discuss what Ishmael refers to as "how things came to be this way" for mankind.

Ishmael uses the example of Nazi Germany to show how the people of his culture are in much of the same situation: either held captive with the mythology of being superior, or "an animal swept up in the stampede" of the captivity of those around them.

Before proceeding, Ishmael defines:

• Takers as people often referred to as "civilized." Particularly, the culture born in an Agricultural Revolution that began about 10,000 years ago in the Near East; the culture of Ishmael's pupil.


• Leavers as people of all other cultures; sometimes referred to as "primitive."


• A story as an interrelation between the gods, man, and the Earth, with a beginning, middle, and end.


• To enact is to strive to make a story come true.


• A culture as a people who are enacting a story.
  
  

The premise of the story enacted by Takers is that they are the pinnacle of evolution (or creation), that the world was made for man, and that man is here to conquer and rule the world.
Ishmael explains that life is subject to immutable laws and it is possible to discern them by studying the biological community and an evolutionarily stable survival strategy for all species called the Law of Limited Competition: "you may compete to the full extent of your capabilities, but you may not hunt down competitors or destroy their food or deny them access to food. In other words, you may compete but you may not wage war." Species follow this law or go extinct. Takers believe themselves exempt from this Law.

Leavers take what they need from the world and leave the rest alone. Living in this manner (in the hands of God), Leavers thrive in times of abundance and dwindle in times of scarcity. The Takers, who practice Totalitarian Agriculture produce enormous food surpluses. "When you have more food than you need, then God has no power over you."

"Takers are 'those who know good and evil' and the Leavers are 'those who live in the hands of the gods'."

According to Ishmael, by living in the hands of God, man is subject to the conditions under which evolution takes place. According to the Takers' story, creation came to an end with man. "In order to make their story come true, the Takers have to put an end to creation itself."

"The premise of the Takers' story is 'The world belongs to man.' ...The premise of the Leavers' story is 'Man belongs to the world.'"

As a writer, I enjoy allegories for their metaphoric narrative descriptions of subjects under the guise of another having similarities to it (e.g., Pilgrims Progress, which describes life as a journey). The socratic, polarized imagery of Ishmael counterpoints humility with hubistic endeavor; self with others; compassion with greed. I'm sure it wasn't lost on Quinn that the Ishmael of the Bible was a rather troublesome and quarrelsome character, who lived in the wilderness and according to God "shall be a wild ass of a man, his hand against every man and every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen." Both the biblical Ishmael and Quinn's Ishmael were "outsiders" and, as such, more likely to be in the position to make commentary.

Ishmael, from the Hebrew word meaning God hears, was the son of Abraham and Hagar, the Egyptian maid of his wife Sarah. When Sarah found herself not having children, she arranged to have a child with Abraham by Hagar acting as a surrogate mother (Genesis 16:1-4), even though God had specifically stated that a child would be born to Sarah in due time. The result was bitter conflict between Ishmael and Isaac, and their descendants, that has gone on right to the present day. Ishmael was born at Mamre, when Abraham was 86, 11 years after Abraham's arrival in what would become the land of Israel (Genesis 16:3). He grew up to be a man of the desert wilderness, with a wild and hostile attitude toward people.

Stumble It! science-fiction

Dreams or Nightmares

My journey in Paris provided only one of several epiphanies I experienced since my initial encounter with a tornado in Louisville, Kentucky, last January. Challenges that thrust my comfortable bloated self toward an edgy lean cliff of awareness. Soon after the tornado, I had that climate change nightmare. It prompted a spate of blog posts on climate change (Tornadoes & climate change; human health; solastalgia). Posts dedicated to our culture’s headlong hurtle toward a “speed of life” that may result in a collision with disaster if we aren't careful.

Paris showed me another culture; a culture who’s reflective gait lies more in step with Nature, a walk that embraces a pace in keeping with life’s cherished sensual qualities: to see, hear, smell, touch and taste all one can… Taking the time to converse with a friend over a quality coffee or wine; waiting contentedly in line at a local boulangerie or patisserie for their favorite loaf of bread; stopping at the metro station to listen to a local chanteur singing a French love song.

My good friend, Danny Bloom (the cool guy who envisioned the concept of Polar Cities in a climate-challenged future) showed his colleague, Paco Mitchell (dream analysist and contributing author of Dream Network, see his bio, below) my climate change nightmare and Paco was so intrigued, he HAD to analyze it. Here is his analysis:

~~~~~~~

Thank you very much for sending me your friend Nina's dream. Very
powerful images.

Certainly the dream shows how what's happening world-wide affects
people generally, and at the same time how it affects her
individually. We all feel the pulse of human activity speeding up, and
some of us, at least, worry about how those activities, in turn,
affect the planet. It's a two-way street: We affect the planet, the
planet affects us. All part of a whole.

What strikes me most about her account of the dream is this
sentence: "I could feel the centrifugal pull of its motion unbalancing
me."

It seems to me that the most important thing she can do is to maintain
her "balance" in the face of unsettling circumstances -- to stay calm
when things get phrenetic, quiet in the midst of clamor, etc. She
wisely points out the paradoxical nature of the conditions we face.
The balance she herself calls for is indeed difficult, but, I would
say, absolutely crucial. In global terms, much depends on large
numbers of individuals achieving such balance in the face of
paradoxical circumstances.

Interestingly, I recently had a simple dream that has me thinking
along unusual lines, and which may just resonate, in a way, with your
friend's dream. In my dream:

I am looking at two jet engines, alongside the man who is responsible
for, or at least knowledgeable about, them. Instead of being mounted
on a plane, as one would expect, however, the engines are part of the
interior of a house. As I watch the turbines, I notice that they are
still spinning, the way they often do at an airport after they've been
shut off -- except that in the dream they are spinning BACKWARDS. I
ask the man if they are spinning backwards in order to remove some of
the CARBON DEPOSITS that have built up inside them. [End of dream.]

After waking and thinking about the dream, I wondered if it had something to do with a global need to "unwind" the fast-paced lives we lead -- the engines, after all, were mounted inside a HOUSE. It occurred to me that anytime we slow down -- or even back up -- and make room and time for simple things, or silence, or just DOING NOTHING, we stand a better chance of opening ourselves to the majesty of being, the beauty of WHAT IS.

In that connection, I've been contemplating writing an article about
raising what I call America's "Epiphany Quotient," which is pitifully
low, of course.
~~~~~~~

Now do you understand why I’m still in Paris? Yes, I’m still there… strolling her beautiful streets, walking her well-kept gardens, adorned with marble statues that line dirt-gravel paths…sitting quietly on a bench, sipping an Antonin Rodet Pinot Noir out of a paper cup and savouring a soft, gooey chunk of heavenly camembert cheese held in my fingers, but only after I’d taken a long appreciative sniff…

Those of you who know me a little also know that I enjoy paradox (it appears in the title of my recent book, Darwin’s Paradox by Dragon Moon Press). Do you know about the "French Paradox?"

Everyone in the world knows that French people live in order to eat and don’t eat in order to live. Yet their longevity is one of the highest in the world.

The French paradox refers to the observation that the French suffer a relatively low incidence of coronary heart disease, despite having a diet relatively rich in saturated fats. Their constant consumption of red wine is supposedly one of the reasons.

I think it is their balanced pace of life. They take the time to live. And to love.

It's our choice.... To suffer nightmares... Or to dream...

~~~~~

Paco Mitchell, M.A., is a writer, depth psychologist, flamenco guitarist and sculptor living in Santa Fe, NM. He studied and attended to dreams for thirty-six years. Currently he is writing a column on dreams (Dreaming Planet) for the Dream Network Journal. Recent articles deal with Pre-Cognitive Dreams, Destiny in Dreams (3 parts), and Wisdom in Dreams (1 of 3 parts). He is also collaborating on a project with Jungian analyst and author Russell Arthur Lockhart, Ph. D. Among other topics, their project -- in dialogue form -- deals with coming global changes as anticipated in dreams. Paco is interested in "gathering dreams that 'belong to the world': dreams that extend beyond the personal situation of the dreamer and touch on collective issues that affect us all." He would welcome hearing from people who are interested in dreams of this kind, or who have some to contribute. You can reach him at: mitchell@cybermesa.com.

~~~~~~

Stumble It! science-fiction

Happy Mother's Day

Life began with waking up and loving my mother's face

--George Eliot

What is a mother?

Before I had my son, I harboured doubts about being a good mother. Even after my precious son was born, I experienced (and no doubt will continue to experience) moments when I wondered if I'd done the right thing...pushed him hard enough in this or that pursuit...encouraged him enough in his interests...imbued him with enough but not too much independence...provided him with the right example to pursue integrity and honour in his life...given him the opportunities to grow into the young man he can be...

Of one thing I am certain: I have loved him entirely and unconditionally.

And he has grown into a wise and beautiful human being. Wiser than his mother, I think. I am so proud of him. And I am learning from this incredible miracle of God (giving birth is truly a miracle) who is less than half my age; this young man who sees the world through the open eyes of quiet compassion and the wisdom of an angel. My precious son...

What is a mother?

I think automatically of my own mother, who was loving, kind, gentle and inspirational. She devoted herself almost entirely to raising me and my brother and sister, almost to a fault; certainly to the detriment of her own pursuits and identity (like many women of her generation). I am happy to say that she later pursued her interests as a professional landscape artist, botanist and naturalist prior to succumbing to a stroke.

The role of a mother is probably the most important career a woman can have--Janet Mary Riley, Lawyer and writer

According to Francis Cardinal Spellman:

A mother is a font and spring of life,

A mother is a forest in whose heart

Lies hid a secret ancient as the hills,

For men to claim and take its wealth away;

And like the forest shall her wealth renew

And give, and give again, that men may live.

What is a mother?...

She broke the bread into two fragments and gave them to the children, who ate with avidity.

"She hath kept none for herself," said the sergeant.

"Because she is not hungry," said a soldier.

"Because she is a mother," said the sergeant.

--Victor Hugo

What is a mother?

We are all mothers. Every woman is a mother, whether she gives birth to a child or a movement; whether she nurtures a family, a corporation or a nation.

--Nina Munteanu - author, scientist and mother

Happy Mother's Day!

Stumble It! science-fiction

Pearls Before Breakfast

After hearing my laments about returning from Paris, France, to “the speed of life” in North America, my good friend, Margaret, passed on to me an interesting article in the Washington Post; something I’d like to share with you:

In it, staff writer, Gene Weingarten, asked the question: Can one of the nation's great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? Weingarten then proceeded to answer it with an experiment, using internationally acclaimed virtuoso violinist, Joshua Bell, who’d agreed to play anonymously as a street performer at the L’Enfant Plaza Metro Station in Washington DC. It was 7:51 a.m. on Friday, January 12, the middle of the morning rush hour. In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by; and virtually all of them kept walking.

Bell’s performance, arranged by The Washington Post, was an experiment in context, perception and priorities – as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?

Bell played masterpieces that have endured for centuries on their brilliance alone, soaring music befitting the grandeur of cathedrals and concert halls. “The violin,” says Weingarten, “is an instrument that is said to be much like the human voice, and in this musician's masterly hands, it sobbed and laughed and sang -- ecstatic, sorrowful, importuning, adoring, flirtatious, castigating, playful, romancing, merry, triumphal, sumptuous.”

Weingarten describes Bell as a heartthrob. Tall and handsome, with a dose of the “cutes”, that, onstage, elides into “hot”, his thick mop of hair is a strategic asset: because his technique is full of body—athletic and passionate—he's almost dancing with the instrument, and his hair flies.” Interview magazine wrote that his playing "does nothing less than tell human beings why they bother to live."

Bell always performs on the same instrument, and he ruled out using another for this gig. Called the Gibson ex Huberman, it was handcrafted in 1713 by Antonio Stradivari during the Italian master's "golden period," toward the end of his career, when he had access to the finest spruce, maple and willow, and when his technique had been refined to perfection. "Our knowledge of acoustics is still incomplete," Bell said, "but he, he just . . . knew."

Bell began with Chaconne from Johann Sebastian Bach's Partita No. 2 in D Minor. Bell calls it "not just one of the greatest pieces of music ever written, but one of the greatest achievements of any man in history. It's a spiritually powerful piece, emotionally powerful, structurally perfect. Plus, it was written for a solo violin, so I won't be cheating with some half-assed version."

Bach's Chaconne, according to Weingarten “consists entirely of a single, succinct musical progression repeated in dozens of variations to create a dauntingly complex architecture of sound. Composed around 1720, on the eve of the European Enlightenment, it is said to be a celebration of the breadth of human possibility.”

Weingarten describes what happened: “Three minutes went by before something happened. Sixty-three people had already passed when, finally, there was a breakthrough of sorts. A middle-age man altered his gait for a split second, turning his head to notice that there seemed to be some guy playing music. Yes, the man kept walking, but it was something. A half-minute later, Bell got his first donation. A woman threw in a buck and scooted off. It was not until six minutes into the performance that someone actually stood against a wall, and listened. Things never got much better. In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run -- for a total of $32 and change. That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look.”

Bell had not expected this reaction and was frankly a little dismayed. He says that as he plays he is capturing emotion as a narrative: "When you play a violin piece, you are a storyteller, and you're telling a story…It was a strange feeling, that people were actually, ah . . ." The word doesn't come easily. ". . . ignoring me."… ignoring his story…

Mark Leithauser, curator at the National Gallery, suggested that we shouldn't be too ready to condemn Metro passersby as unsophisticated. Context matters. In his Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, Immanuel Kant argued that one's ability to appreciate beauty is related to one's ability to make moral judgments. Paul Guyer of the University of Pennsylvania, one of America's most prominent Kantian scholars, says the 18th-century German philosopher felt that to properly appreciate beauty, the viewing conditions must be optimal.

Would it have been different if people had recognized Bell? Perhaps that is a loaded question; to recognize Bell would be to already have joined a “club” per se and to have no doubt seen him in concert. Moreover, it brings up yet another question about North Americans as a culture: do we need someone else to tell us what is beautiful and worthwhile?

Weingaraten describes the one case of someone who did recognize Bell:

As it happens, exactly one person recognized Bell, and she didn't arrive until near the very end. For Stacy Furukawa, a demographer at the Commerce Department, there was no doubt. She doesn't know much about classical music, but she had been in the audience three weeks earlier, at Bell's free concert at the Library of Congress. And here he was, the international virtuoso, sawing away, begging for money. She had no idea what the heck was going on, but whatever it was, she wasn't about to miss it.

Furukawa positioned herself 10 feet away from Bell, front row, center. She had a huge grin on her face. The grin, and Furukawa, remained planted in that spot until the end.

"It was the most astonishing thing I've ever seen in Washington," Furukawa says. "Joshua Bell was standing there playing at rush hour, and people were not stopping, and not even looking, and some were flipping quarters at him! Quarters! I wouldn't do that to anybody. I was thinking, Omigosh, what kind of a city do I live in that this could happen?"

“We're busy,” says Weingarten. “Americans have been busy, as a people, since at least 1831, when a young French sociologist named Alexis de Tocqueville visited the States and found himself impressed, bemused and slightly dismayed at the degree to which people were driven, to the exclusion of everything else, by hard work and the accumulation of wealth.” If this had been staged in a Paris Metro, say Châtelet Métro Station, I assure you that the level of appreciation—lack of it, that is—would not have occurred. As I scaled the stairway to the Station lobby, I would have encountered an appreciative crowd surrounding this virtuoso musician, who plays like an angel. I have seen more attention given to a middle-aged local French chanteur (who sang with a so-so voice, but with passion) at Saint-Michel Métro Station in Paris than was apparently shown for young international star Joshua Bell in l'Enfant Plaza Metro in Washington, DC.

Not much has changed since Tocqeville’s visit to America, says Weingarten. “Pop in a DVD of Koyaanisqatsi, the wordless, darkly brilliant, avant-garde 1982 film about the frenetic speed of modern life. Backed by the minimalist music of Philip Glass, director Godfrey Reggio takes film clips of Americans going about their daily business, but speeds them up until they resemble assembly-line machines, robots marching lockstep to nowhere.” See my own post on this movie as part of a dissertation on the speed of life. "Koyaanisqatsi" is a Hopi word that means "life out of balance."

British author John Lane writes about the loss of the appreciation for beauty in the modern world in his 2003 book entitled Timeless Beauty: In the Arts and Everyday Life. The experiment at L'Enfant Plaza may be symptomatic of that, Lane suggested, “not because people didn't have the capacity to understand beauty, but because it was irrelevant to them.”

"This is about having the wrong priorities," said Lane. And losing one's balance of life.

Weingarten ends with this dark reflection on our culture and cautionary note: “If we can't take the time out of our lives to stay a moment and listen to one of the best musicians on Earth play some of the best music ever written; if the surge of modern life so overpowers us that we are deaf and blind to something like that—then what else are we missing?”



Much of the text was excerpted from an article by Gene Weingarten that appeared in the Washington Post, Sunday, April 8, 2007. Read the entire article and watch the heart-breaking videos here. Gene Weingarten can be reached at weingarten@washpost.com.

Stumble It! science-fiction

Falling for Paris

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast

—Ernest Hemingway

It’s been a week since I left Paris and came home. My heart aches like a lost lover. You could call it jet lag, but I prefer to believe that I’ve fallen head-over-heels in love: dazed with haunting visions of a city that opened me like a bracing wind sweeps open the shutters of a window to light my soul with wonder.

To fall in love is to open oneself completely and be changed. Paris changed me.

When I returned home, several people asked me what struck me the most about Paris. I was challenged to provide a single highlight and realized that everything coalesced into a larger phenomenon that encompassed the attractive people, neo-classical architecture, quaint cobble streets, complex fragrances and ambience that is Paris.

Paris is a beautiful, complex city that cannot be described or defined without giving oneself totally away. In the final analysis, it is the people who make the city… Parisians are elegant stylish people with a mild reserve that melts instantly when you approach them with sincerity and respect or if you require assistance. Then, they are quick to help and to smile and laugh. And are ultimately the kindest people I have met.

The Parisians express their sensuality with a quiet ease and confidence that is attractive and alluring. They may not gesticulate like the Italians, but they speak eloquently over wine and coffee, and show affection openly (their typical greeting with friends is a kiss on one or both cheeks, and both sexes partake in this wonderful ritual). My apartment lay just west of the Latin Quarter off Rue Saint Germaine overlooking a maze of cafés, bistros, bars and brasseries. My landlady warned me of the late night noise and suggested I get earplugs. I foolishly didn’t and the first night, as I lay awake in bed during the late night revelry, I was struck by the thought that the crowds of smokers below my window were simply talking and laughing. In North America, it would have been the thundering beat of music and stomping feet and drunken yells. Instead it was the lively carillon of Parisians communicating.

Parisians walk with fluid elegance, confident in their own attractiveness. They embrace and exude an inner beauty that shows in the gracefulness of their gate, the flourish of their dress, and their impeccable poise. Simply put, they are beautiful, but mainly because they do not flaunt it; they simply are.

The French live a balanced life, where the sensual pleasures and relationships with others play equal to, in fact supersede, ambitions for wealth and power. Paris supports a culture that values art and philosophy over money and power. There are, for instance, more chefs in Paris than there are lawyers; not surprising, actually. Yet, the Parisians are impeccably dressed and can afford a cup of coffee for 2.5 Euros. The difference is that the coffee is exquisite, like everything in Paris.

So, I haven’t come home yet. A part of me, a ghost of me, lingers on the cobble streets and inside the cafés of Paris… tasting and smelling Paris and missing the thrill of being newly defined each day.

Paris, je t'aime...

ton amant, Nina

Stumble It! science-fiction